We might all dream of balmy days and a life of leisure and indulgence.
What is life for? we might wonder.
Matt Jackson has made some acute observations about his life so far ...
When I was growing up, there was a red-headed girl who lived five or six doors down from my family. She lived with a single mother. I was too old to join in with the younger kid’s games, but she played with my siblings, and I knew her vaguely.
In her mid-teens she died of a congenital disorder. A few years later her mother moved away.
Next door, a decade or so later, the family of a girl I went to primary school with moved in. Her father had recently finished work and was settling into retirement. He was out for lunch with his brother one day when he suffered a massive heart attack. He didn’t survive.
Across the road, and down the street, on very rare occasions an ambulance would be parked. Good news never followed.
Around the corner lives the man who taught me guitar through my teens. A few years after he stopped teaching me, his wife died of breast cancer. A year or so after that, one of his sons committed suicide.
A guy I went to high school with lost his arm in a keg explosion while working at a bowling club. A girl from the same year died in Melbourne after being hit by a garbage truck.
I could go on endlessly. I won’t. That’s enough. You get the point.
Every day is sand through an hourglass. Caught in our daily struggles and distractions and nuisances and demands we don’t perceive the world this way, nor should we, lest it forever be front of mind.
But we should never forget. This truth is worth orienting the arc of our lives by, before it’s too late.
Matt Jackson
Copyright: text - Matt Jackson; photos - Wix & mfsprout.
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